Instant Buildings - just add water!

[tedster]

Wired reports on a very solid idea for easily deployed shelter. It's major help in disaster areas of many kinds - not flimsy like tents, and not hard to transport like pre-fab buildings.

A pair of engineers in London have come up with a "building in a bag" -- a sack of cement-impregnated fabric. To erect the structure, all you have to do is add water to the bag and inflate it with air. Twelve hours later the Nissen-shaped shelter is dried out and ready for use.

[wired.com...]

[photon]

Once you get your building up, take an extra eight minutes to set up an office [ubergizmo.com] inside it.

[oddsod]

Except for tsunami situations isn't water the least available item in disaster areas? Unless they include a bottle or two as part of the kit, I suppose.
But, then people may want to drink it!

[hannamyluv]

isn't water the least available item in disaster areas

Drinkable water is least avaliable. non-drinkable is normally near to most situations, like the kind that comes from *ehem* human sources. So I think that unless they were going to eat the building, they could find some water. ;)

[lawman]

Instant H_{2O - it's an empty can with the instructions "Just add water". :)}

[oddsod]

non-drinkable is normally near to most situations

It's actually very, very rarely available in disaster areas except in flood type calamities. While using human waste is one desparate solution I don't believe that it's what the inventors had in mind or what would be considered best practice from the health perspective. Even naturally available water often gets very quickly polluted.

The concept is great but i'd work on removing the prerequisite of water. Perhaps they could attempt using materials other than cement. Even fibreglass needs only a small volume of resin + catalyst to achieve rigidity and it takes only seconds/minutes (not twelve hours!). Further, I can't see the water based shelter drying quickly in heavy rain. What do you do - keep it indoors till it dries?

Another advantage with fibreglass or similar solution is that it won't weight 230 kilos. Jeez, try carrying a few of those cement babies around in your knapsack. Weight is a very important consideration where you're air dropping supplies.

Work on the idea a bit guys.

[supermanjnk]

" Instant H2O - it's an empty can with the instructions "Just add water". :) "

O.O you've discovered my secret plans for dehydrated water...

[tbear]

Too late [buydehydratedwater.com]

[larryhatch]

Instant happiness. Just add money.